JRP-Ringier.com:
David Robbins
The Ice Cream Social
An American tradition, an "ice cream social" is an occasion for the members of a community to gather together to relax with friends and enjoy confectionery refreshments.
David Robbins’ "Ice Cream Social" does all this while adding a layer of something else. The comedy reffered to as a 'comedy' on backcover (not here, actually) started in 1993 when a Baskin-Robbins ice cream "parlor" was used for an exhibition of paintings based on the company’s graphics. and so what difference did it make to the event, the activity, that the paintings were there?
Over the following decade it expanded into live events, a TV pilot, and a feature movie script.
These derivations, together with digital designs digital designs of what? presented here along with a novella from 1998, show the full extent of this ironic ? utterance of a later over-praised by whom? "relationsl aesthetic." ?
In his famous 1986 work "Talent" (eighteen show biz-style "headshots" of the New York art scene), David Robbins equated artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince with entertainers; the ICS deepens this investigation into the relationship between art and entertainment. These two projects, as well as David Robbins’ practice in general, mark an important step in the critical genealogy of the entrance of the art system into the popular culture industry.